The interaction between a pharmacist and a patient is often at its most important when a patient is picking up a prescription. In particular, great care needs to be taken so that the patient receives the correct prescription. Receiving the wrong prescription has the potential for significant adverse health outcomes either because of the patient has an adverse effect in response to receiving the wrong prescription or has an adverse health effect in response to not having the correct prescription. Likewise, another patient may receive the prescription intended for the first patient, and also have an adverse health effect as a result. As such, there exists a strong safety issue in ensuring that patients receive the correct prescription.
Generally, the only insurance that a patient receives the correct prescription is the pharmacist, or personnel authorized by the pharmacist, completing the transaction for the prescription. Typically, the pharmacist manually asks the patient to verify his/her address or other form of identifying information, and compares the response provided by the patient with information presented on a workstation in connection with a datafile on the patient's prescription. If the information corresponds to what the pharmacist sees, the pharmacist proceeds with the transaction for the prescription. Reliance upon a pharmacist to ask the patient for identifying information necessarily introduces variance into the procedure, in that the pharmacist may not always be consistent in asking the same information from the patient to verify the prescription.